Error -25: Invalid Amount - trying to import sales into item bill so as not to double up on work load

Hi Mazzii1 , don't post sensitive information, because the forum sends posts out immediately to anyone who has that setting in their notifications.

Importing has its peculiarities, and there's a learning curve that comes with it. 

I understand you are importing an item sale and an item purchase. There is a process in the sale window where you can create a purchase from the sale, but there may be issues with how complete that is. It may also work correctly in the browser. 

If you prepared the files for import in Excel and saved them as text files, don't those files show you what you did?

One way to proceed is to create an example of the transactions you want to import, and then export them to a file and open those in Excel. Then add the information for the new transactions, but don't delete any columns. The invalid amoutn error can be triggered by haveing columns in the wrong order. 

Each separate transaction needs to have a blank line after it. But start small, ie one transaction of each kind. 

Hi Mazzii1,

Thank you so much for your post and welcome to the Community Forum! I am sorry to hear that you were having problems in importing your sales. I really appreciate your patience and understanding about this issue and thanks for the information. When importing into AccountRight Live, a Tab Delimited or Comma Separated CSV file, that has been saved from Microsoft Excel, can cause the import to skip the records, with the message: Error -25: Invalid amount.

To fix this, The quotation marks need to be removed before importing again. There are multiple ways to achieve this, ideally just change the column format in Microsoft Excel, and save the file and import again. Identify the column causing the issue, then in Excel select the entire column, then right click the column header, and select Format Cells. 

You can also visit this post for more information: Importing sales error -25.

Please do let me know how you go on this.
Regards
Earl

Hi Mike_James 

Thank you for your response. That's right re: sensitive info hence why I didn't want to upload it. As I don't know who uses this forum from the same industry.

So the import log shows me the error -25 - invalid amount, then in the fields that i'm trying to import, I'm not really understanding what the issue is. I have changed all the fields with numbers to ensure they are General or Numbers (down to 2 decimals), I've made sure the data follows what is listed in the import information section on the MYOB website. What I haven't done is re-order the columns to the same order as Item layout for Bills. However, the one successful text file I did upload, I didn't change the columns for this either. But I realised I was missing information that I didn't want to have to retype all over again. It's becoming tedious. With every invoice I create for the month, there is at least 20-30 daily dockets. Half of our invoices are subcontractors which means I have bills for them. I enter all dockets into Time Billing so I have to use the desktop app, not the browser, then i export the sales and try to reconfigre the names of the columns and info to match what i would want to import into an Item bill, so that I'm not completely retyping every docket for every bill. 

I hope that makes sense. I just want my job to be easier especially because I do all the bookwork myself and trying to manage other personal affairs on-top, it's been a work-around to get MYOB working for me, and not against me.

Regards,

Mazzii

Hi Earl_HD ,

Thank you and I have read through your previous suggestions and tried to apply your solution, even though I cannot see any quotation marks on the text file or the text file logs. But it still hasn't helped. 

I'm exporting time billing sales, reconfiguring the csv to look like an Item Bill, saving as a text file and importing from there. I had one successful file but coulnd't do it again after that. I'm not sure why and I'm not understanding the issue from the import error log. 

Thank you again. 

Regards,

Mazzii

Hi again,

Finally uploaded an Item bill without errors however, none of the billed or received quantities uploaded. Why is this? The columns were named and matched to the item bill fields and the import log had no errors. 

I don't know why this is so complicated. In Xero, we can copy a sale to a bill, but it wouldn't bring over the added information on each transaction line like date and docket number. Only the genric item desciption. But still, way less complicated than this. I came to MYOB thinking it was going to be easier, more efficient... it's been anything but that unfortunately.

I look forward to your reply.

Mazzii

Hi Mazzii1,

Thank you for providing detailed information. Your patience and understanding regarding this issue are greatly appreciated, and I apologize for the delayed response. To resolve this, please edit the import file in a text editor program such as Notepad and remove the extra blank lines. Keep in mind that each transaction should still be separated by a single blank line in the import file.
 

If you encounter any difficulties during this process or have further questions, please feel free to reach out for assistance.

Best regards,
Earl

Hi Earl_HD 

Thanks for your response. I don't understand what you mean by extra blank lines? There are no blank lines between each transaction. But then in the next sentence, you say that each transaction line has to be seperated by a single blank line!? Very confusing.

I tried adding a single blank lines between each transaction and re-imported the file. What a mistake that was. Not only did it still not import the Billed or Received amounts, each line was imported into a seperate bill instead of the one bill!! 

Why does everything else import except for the quantities entered in the Billed or Received columns? 

Cheers,

Mazzii1 

Hi Mazzii1 , I mentioned that there was a learning curve to importing transactions to MYOB! The blank line should only be added between each separate transaction, not each transaction line, otherwise you will get that incorrect result, ie each line will become a separate bill. 

Last things first - you are importing item bills, which are based on exported your time billing sales, with columns transferred as required. You'll know that T/Billing sales lines are not the same as item bill lines, and bills in general require different information to sales on each line, so you will need to add some infomation to your import file that relates to bills.

Since this is taking a while to resolve, if you wish, email me an example of exported sales, plus the item bill import file based on those sales. I may be able to comment back via the forum without disclosing any of your company information. 

You described your process here:

With every (sales) invoice I create for the month, there is at least 20-30 daily dockets.

Half of our invoices are subcontractors which means I have bills for them.

I enter all dockets into Time Billing (so I have to use the desktop app, not the browser), then i export the sales and try to reconfigure the names of the columns and info to match what i would want to import into an Item bill.

Have you at some point entered an item bill manually, then exported that to a text file, then copy/paste the text to an Excel workbbook,  and use that as your template? That will give you all the columns, in the correct order.

I can't tell why your imported bills do not have billed and received quantitires.

Hi Mazzii1,

I'm sorry to hear that. I'd be glad to take a look at this for you, can you please confirm the last four digits of your Serial Number and Company File ID?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!
Regards,
Earl

Hi Mike_James 

Yes, it most definitley is a learning curve! Which is good as I have learnt from my mistakes. 

I am fully aware of the difference between Time billing sales invoices and Item bills from suppliers. I have followed a lot of steps to ensure I'm inputting the correct information. Including exporting an Item bill to use the columns as a template for the sales transactions I wish to import. 

With the bill/received quantities, I've tried renaming Billed to Bills (as this is what it says in the actualy item bill, but not in the matching import section), tried just Billed and not the receiving column. I'm obviously not doing something right, just can't get my head around it. 

I have created a sample file for each export t/billing sales, and import item bill. I also uploaded the sample item bill to show to upload the import log I receive, which has 0 errors.

Thank you.

Mazzii